The High Point University men’s lacrosse team held the first official practice in program history on Monday morning in Vert Stadium. Without any official games this year, the Panthers will be working a lot on fundamentals in preparation for 2012-13. HPU has two scrimmages this fall.

“The first practice went well,” said HPU head coach Jon Torpey. “We’re starting off at a really slow clip. We’re going to go 25 percent, 50 percent, 75 percent and build up to 100 percent pace. Right now we’ve got a lot of different things we’ve got to work on from a fundamental standpoint so we’re compromising speed for form. Eventually toward the end of the fall we’ll get these guys practicing at the high rate of speed that we want to be able to play in.”

High Point will scrimmage against the University of Tennessee’s club team on Oct. 1 before attending the Tennessee vs. Buffalo football game at 1 p.m. that afternoon.

On Oct. 8, HPU will practice against the U.S. National Team from 9:30-10:30 a.m. at Duke University in Durham, N.C. The Panthers will warm up, do stick drills and practice against the U.S. National Team.

Torpey and assistant coaches Pat Tracy and Michael Phipps are spending this year working with HPU’s 20 student-athletes who were part of the initial recruiting class for High Point University men’s lacrosse. They will continue building the program this year in anticipation of HPU’s first varsity season of 2012-13.

I loved going to the camp in the summer….I was just a rising sophomore at the time, and I learned a lot since most the players there were from some of the elite northern high schools…and I know that I would definitely go back because they pushed you to do your best. I never really knew what my weaknesses were until I got there, so now that I have an idea of what they are, I am going to train hard to make those weaknesses my strengths.

Chris McAllister

I loved going to the camp in the summer….I was just a rising sophomore at the time, and I learned a lot since most the players there were from some of the elite northern high schools…and I know that I would definitely go back because they pushed you to do your best. I never really knew what my weaknesses were until I got there, so now that I have an idea of what they are, I am going to train hard to make those weaknesses my strengths.